I saw one of Anita Sarkeesian's videos in my recommended and I said "fuck it" and gave it a good faith watch. I may not agree with, or understand every single point, but I remember that she got DEMONIZED for making this. I was told that she hated men, that she wanted all these sexist roles inverted to be in women's favor, and that she was some authoritarian fun police (ironically said by the ringleaders of the satanic panic).
She said some things, and people thought some of what she said was wrong. Even I did. For example, she mentioned Betty from Rugrats as an example of a "straw feminist", but she was portrayed in a sympathetic light and was not meant to imply "feminism bad". Yes, she's androgynous and she's a lesbian, but she's handled pretty well as a character. I'd hardly consider Tracer a straw feminist (I would at least assume she considers herself one since she found Mondatta "an inspiration growing up).
I know that this was just ONE video, but from the information I have, it seems like this whole thing was blown WAY out of proportion. So what gives? Why Anita in particular? Also, how did this whole gamergate thing grow into being rightoid woodstock?
Probably true. I just remember having talked about gaming journalism issues (not in an 'ethics in gaming journalism sense' just as in an general consumer industry journalism sense, with games being like an in that people would understand) with people online before anything was called 'GamerGate' and then some seperate personal drama thing involving the dev, journo and I think the dev's ex that I didn't hear about until a couple days later.
(Edit: This was when I was younger and more lib so I thought you could organize around some level of consumer culture. Ah youthful idiocy.)
(2nd Edit: I'm trying to remember the specific things but the big thing was ratings inflation, where more and more games were getting perfect scores even if they were coming out unfinished (little did we know that they would look practically polished compared to most modern games))
From my perspective it was a small discussion among some online leftists trying to talk to people about issues of industrial capital blowing up into some sort of internet phenomena because of weird Internet drama that was immediately exploited by the right because of the sexual politics.